Articles by Eleanor Stratton

Federal Witness Immunity: Use vs. Transactional

You can refuse to testify if your answer could incriminate you. That is the Fifth Amendment in its most familiar form. But in federal court, that refusal is not always the end of the story. A prosecutor can ask a judge to order you to testify anyway, as long as the government gives you a specific...

FARA Explained: Who Must Register and Why

In American politics, “foreign influence” is a phrase that can mean everything and nothing at once. The Foreign Agents Registration Act, usually shortened to FARA , is one of the few laws that turns that anxiety into a concrete rule: if you are acting in the United States as an agent of a...

Election Observers, Poll Watchers, and Challengers

On Election Day, democracy does something unusual: it invites the public to watch itself work. That visibility is a feature, not a flaw. Transparent procedures can be harder to manipulate and easier to trust. But the same public access that supports accountability can also be misused. The law draws...

Motion for Summary Judgment

Most civil lawsuits do not end with a dramatic trial. They end on paper. One of the biggest paper tools in federal court is the motion for summary judgment , often shortened to MSJ . It is the moment a party tells the judge: if you view the evidence and draw all reasonable inferences in the other...

How Congressional Redistricting Works After the Census

Every ten years, the United States does something deceptively simple: it counts people. Then the hard part begins. The census is not just a headcount for trivia night. It is the starting gun for a chain reaction that moves seats in the House of Representatives, forces states to redraw districts,...

Gorsuch, “Hard Cases,” and Trust in the Supreme Court

When Americans say they have “lost trust” in the Supreme Court, they rarely mean they no longer trust the Court to decide . Of course it decides. Nine justices vote, opinions get published, and the country moves on, sometimes grudgingly. What people mean is something more constitutional and...

When Government Nudges Become Censorship

Most Americans know the First Amendment’s basic idea: the government generally cannot punish you for political speech. That statement comes with important, narrow exceptions, including limits on true threats, incitement, and certain time, place, and manner rules. It also depends on context....

Can Minnesota Democrats Pass a Gun Ban Through an Omnibus Bill?

Minnesota Democrats are advancing a broad firearms package in the form of a single omnibus bill, a structure that turns multiple contested policies into one up-or-down vote. The bill at the center of the debate is SF 4067 , formally titled the Omnibus Firearms Bill . The Minnesota Senate is...

Who Can Shut Down Telehealth Abortion Pills by Court Order?

It is hard to overstate what almost happened in the last few days: a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit accepted Louisiana’s request for an injunction that would have halted telehealth dispensing of mifepristone nationwide, even in states where abortion remains...

The U.S. Marshals Service: Powers and Constitutional Role

People usually notice the U.S. Marshals Service at the loud moments. A high-profile arrest. A fugitive search splashed across headlines. A judge escorted through a garage entrance after threats spike online. But the Marshals are not a general-purpose federal police force, and they are not a private...

Presentence Investigation Reports and Federal Sentencing

Federal sentencing has a reputation for being cold and mathematical, like you type a few numbers into a formula and the judge prints a prison term. In reality, one of the most influential documents in the entire process is often written after the plea or verdict, when most of the drama seems...

Judicial Recusal: When Judges Must Step Aside

Most Americans learn the basics of the courts as if judges are neutral machines: a case goes in, the law comes out. Recusal is the part of the system that quietly admits what everyone already knows. Judges are people. They have friendships, investments, former clients, spouses with careers, strong...

Superseding Indictments Explained

You can be indicted, arraigned, and think the shape of your case is finally set. Then the government comes back with a new charging document that adds a defendant, adds counts, fixes dates, or swaps in a different theory of the crime. That is a superseding indictment. And the word is doing more...

Immigration Bonds and ICE Custody Hearings

When someone is held by ICE, families often reach for the closest familiar idea: bail. But immigration detention is civil, not criminal. That one distinction changes almost everything about release. There is no jury, and there is no criminal prosecutor. Instead, the government is represented by a...

What Secretaries of State Do in Elections

During election season, the phrase “the secretary of state” starts showing up in headlines like it is a single national referee. It is not. There is no single federal official who serves as “secretary of state for elections.” The federal government does have election-related roles,...

Divided Government

Americans talk about “divided government” like it is a temporary weather system: clear skies when one party wins everything, gridlock clouds when power splits. But divided government is not a glitch. It is what you should expect from a constitutional design that intentionally divides power even...

Pledged Delegates, Superdelegates, and How Nominees Are Chosen

Every four years, Americans talk about “winning the primary” as if a state’s popular vote directly crowns a nominee. It does not. Not exactly. What it actually does is award delegates , and those delegates later cast the votes that formally nominate a candidate at the party’s national...

Help America Vote Act (HAVA) Explained

Americans like to say voting is a right. In practice, voting is also a process. A long chain of check-in tables, poll books, registration databases, ballot scanners, and human judgment calls. When that process fails, the Constitution usually does not hand you a simple remedy. Elections are largely...

National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter), Explained

Most Americans have heard of “Motor Voter” in the vague way we hear about a lot of election laws: it sounds like something about the DMV, and it probably happened in the 1990s, and it is either the reason elections are easier or the reason elections are suspicious, depending on who is talking....

Runoff Elections in the United States

America runs elections the way it runs a lot of things: locally, inconsistently, and with more rules than most voters realize until the rule hits them. One state can send a Senator to Washington with a simple plurality. Another can send you back to the polls a month later for a runoff. A...